An artist's rendering of the James Webb Space Telescope
Photo: DPA/NASA/GSFC
The James Webb telescope has only been fully aligned at its workplace in space since April - now Nasa is reporting an incident.
The $10 billion telescope was struck by a tiny meteorite, slightly damaging one of its primary mirrors.
The incident happened between May 23rd and 25th.
The micrometeorite left a small but noticeable effect on the telescope's data.
"Thorough analyzes and measurements are in progress," according to NASA.
The engineers have now started readjusting the affected mirror segment to compensate for the distortion caused.
As the US space agency further announced, it was the fifth impact of this type.
However, the previous ones would not have left any significant traces.
In principle, however, there is no reason to worry about the expensive telescope.
"After initial evaluations, the team determined that it is still operating at a level that exceeds all mission requirements," it said.
Accordingly, the mission should be continued according to plan and the first color images will be available in July.
The scientific operation will also start in the summer, it said.
The James Webb Telescope is the most expensive observatory ever and has only been in space for a few months.
Only in January did it reach its destination 1.5 million kilometers from Earth, at the so-called second Lagrange point.
From there, it will explore the early days of the universe 13 billion years ago, just a few hundred million years after the Big Bang.
Astronomers expect groundbreaking insights from the most powerful telescope to date and conclusions about the formation of the first stars and galaxies.
Chance hits are priced in
When operating the telescope, collisions with small, dust-sized particles that fly through space at extreme speeds are unavoidable, and the 18 golden mirror segments are designed to be correspondingly robust.
"We have always known that Webb must withstand the space environment, which includes harsh ultraviolet light, charged particles from the Sun, cosmic rays from exotic sources in the galaxy, and the occasional impact of micrometeoroids in our solar system," said Paul Geithner, project manager at Goddard Space NASA Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.
But the latest impact was larger than previously modeled and beyond what the team could have tested on the ground, Nasa writes.
Micrometeorites are particles ranging in size from a few hundred microns to a few millimeters.
When they enter the earth's atmosphere, they can reach enormous speeds of more than 70 kilometers per second.
Last month's micrometeorite was not from a meteor shower.
Details are currently unknown.
The US space agency described the impact as an unavoidable random event and announced that it had now convened a team of engineers to investigate ways of avoiding future impacts.
joe/Reuters